


When A Tree Falls In The Forest

by loudle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:49:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5117756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudle/pseuds/loudle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry does a tell-all interview in 2021. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?</p>
            </blockquote>





	When A Tree Falls In The Forest

I sat down on the hard wooden seat of the chair. Harry Styles, a true English gentleman, insisted that he fetch our drinks. I allowed him the pleasure, and watched as he slid into his seat across from me. I took my cup of coffee from his massive hands and thanked him for his courtesy. He nodded graciously as if it were nothing, but a humble star is a dime a dozen, these days. I'm not sure even he understands how special he is; someone with such a dazzling smile and intense green eyes doesn't need to be nice, but he is. I don't know why, but he is.  
"Haven't done this in a long time," he mumbled to himself; I almost felt as though I was intruding by responding to the statement.  
"Have you not?," I asked him and he shook his head.  
"No," he replied as a cheeky smile spread across his face. I watched a dimple appear in his cheek, the same dimple that had made me swoon from my nosebleed seats on the Take Me Home Tour years ago. As I fought to control my inner-fangirl, he hid his smile behind his cup of tea when he added, "Haven't missed it a bit." Ouch. That probably wasn't meant to be a blow to my ego, but it was. I suddenly remembered who I was, the business I represented, and what that business did to this man when he was in the spotlight. Humbled by his subtle reminder, I lowered myself down a few pegs. I wasn't there to write a gossip piece for a tabloid rag, I was there to write the truth- something so many magazines, including the one I am reporting for, tried their best to hide for so long.  
He was done hiding. That, I knew. It was just my job to help him communicate the right message.  
"Not at all?," I questioned. He pondered the thought momentarily before answering.  
"I suppose you do miss certain things," he said, setting his cup down in its saucer to think. "I miss my boys a lot. We try to keep in touch but it's hard, you know?," he informed me, and I nodded as if I understood, but I'm not sure many people know what it must feel like to have once been apart of the biggest boyband of all time, having to learn how to live on top of one another for essentially 365 days a year, and then having to learn to live without one another all over again. I pretended to get it, but we both held a silent agreement that I did not and never will. There are only four others who could possibly understand. "We all have our own lives now," he continued, "Liam with the music production, Zayn, good lad, he's tackling that solo career he always deserved, and Niall... Niall is just.. Niall." I laughed at that, and he smiled at my amusement, basking in the inadvertent praise.  
"And Louis?," I asked then, nonchalantly, and something sparkled in his eyes when I said the name.  
"Louis," he repeated, his mouth twisting into a smirk. I tried not to scream, remembering all the Larry Stylinson fanfictions I had read during my high school career.  
"You see him a lot," I said, more a statement than a question. He hid a shy smile behind his white cup, shrugging his wide shoulders.  
"You could say that," he did not argue. The black swallows inked into his collarbones caught my eye, and I remembered all the theories I had read surrounding the art that adorned his clavicle. He caught me staring and pointed a long slender finger at the larger one.  
"You like them?," he asked, tracing the outline of its wings with his index finger. I nodded. "Wanna see 'em then?," he asked, and I urged him to indulge the teenage girl inside of me that would have died had she been in a similar situation. He further unbuttoned the intricately patterned silk Yves Saint Laurent shirt with deft hands. There were only four buttons done to begin with, now there were none. He uncovered his chest, and I saw that he had new tattoos etched into his skin that time had forced me to lose track of.  
"They're beautiful," I remarked, reaching out with a hesitant hand to run the pads of my fingers over "17BLACK" carved into his left shoulder.  
"That's an old one," he informed me, as if I didn't have a clue. Little did he know.  
"Do they have significances?," I asked, leaning back in my chair and taking a long sip of my coffee. He looked at me thoughtfully.  
"They do," he confirmed.  
"Which one means the most to you?" He took a long few moments before answering.  
"It's not on my chest," he responded finally, and shrugged off his dress shirt down around his shoulders. If anyone else had begun to undress in Chez Ritz, they would likely have been escorted out, but not Harry Styles. Who could ask the Prince to leave? He pointed to a small tattoo, much simpler than most of the others that littered his body, that read a single word: "Hi".  
"What does it mean?," I asked him as he slipped his shirt back over his shoulders and began to button it halfway up once again.  
"That's the first word he ever said to me," he told me, not meeting my eye, but instead fixating on a button that would not go through the fabric.  
"Who?," I asked, though I already knew. The Larry shipper inside of me just wanted to hear him say it. He looked up at me then, his green eyes dancing, preparing for a challenge.  
"Louis," he said easily, though the look with which he gazed upon me led me to believe that saying this was far from a walk in the park.  
"Why did you get that tattoo?," I asked him slowly, silently reminding him that each and every word he said was being recorded on the small device on the table between us- this was all on record.  
"When you love someone, you want to remember every moment you've ever shared with him or her," he explained evenly, "especially the very first. So I got, "Hi," and he got, "Oops!" Now we can't forget."  
"You love him?," I asked, though I knew the answer. He nodded slowly.  
"I do. Very much so," he confirmed my suspicions. I felt myself smile and my cheeks twinge with a warm shade of a blush; I had dreamt of this moment as a teenager, and now, I still felt the urge to cry as he told me what I always knew: I had been right the entire time.  
"Fans speculate that you have a lot of tattoos dedicated to him and vice versa," I said and he nodded easily.  
"They always have been good at that," he said, a playful smile tugging at his lips as he sipped his drink.  
"Always have been good at what?," I asked, seemingly on behalf of the fans, but secretly in defense of myself.  
"The fans," he began, "have always been good at speculating what we do and picking it all apart." He nodded, placing his cup back on the saucer. "They were right about a lot of things."  
Here we go.  
"Things like what?," I pressed him further and he smiled, that glimmer coming back to light up his eyes. He tapped the bird on his left collarbone that peeked from beneath the silk with a long index finger.  
"My tattoos, for one."  
"What about your tattoos?," I said as I realized that if I wanted any information at all, I'd have to ask. Harry Styles was not one to speak unless spoken to, a gentleman through and through. I didn't think I'd ever wish for somebody to be just a little less polite.  
"The messages behind them," he said, pouring a spot of tea into his newly-empty cup from the small silver pot in front of him.  
"What are the messages?," I asked, not for the first time in this conversation feeling like an intruder by asking my interviewee questions, but for the first time in my career as a journalist.  
"Most of them are for him," he said, looking deeply into his cup as he stirred in a teaspoon of sugar.  
"For Louis?," I clarified.  
He nodded in affirmation. He seemed shy suddenly- bashful even. I could see a light blush spreading across his cheeks from underneath his long eyelashes.  
"You said that the fans always speculated," I began gently, and he hummed in agreement, "and that they were right." He looked up then, meeting my eyes. He seemed to be searching for malice, but all I could offer was genuine concern. He relaxed a little, nodding.  
"They were- are, I suppose."  
"So what are you saying, Harry?," I offered him the floor. He looked at me, panicking for a moment before instantly smoothing it over with a charming little smirk; I attributed this talent to his years in the limelight- he often had to switch Harry off and turn on The Harry Styles in order to protect himself. I felt an urge to protect him but I didn't. We all know he has somebody for that.  
"I'm saying," he began thoughtfully, pausing to think for a minute, "that when they said that I fell in love at 16 with a boy who was 18 and too fast for me, they were right." His eyes crinkled at that, and I felt my heart tighten in my chest at his words. "Now I'm 27 and he's 29 and he still moves too fast for me. He just waits for me to catch up every few laps that he does. I always come around," he winked, perfectly suave with a raging fire in his eyes. I wished that he would unleash the flame for me to report, but I knew that he wouldn't. He was too good at what he did.  
"You've been together all this time?," I asked and he nodded slowly, suddenly movement a little bit sad in how they were conveyed.  
"Why are you only saying it now? Why not before?," I asked and I watched his heart bleed through his eyes, though his sweet smile remained. I wondered how many different people were in my same position in the past asking wildly different questions who had gotten the same reaction. Did they feel as guilty as I did?  
"Because when your career depends less on your talent and more on your sex appeal, you have to keep your target audience in mind always," he explained, as if he were reading from a script. I suppose he had heard these words enough times to consider them a mantra.  
"Always?," I questioned and he nodded with a sigh that sounded like a sad song. They should've put that on an album.  
"Everything I said was to please someone else. Everything I wore up until pretty much the end was to sell a brand. Even what I ate was monitored to make sure I stayed nice and trim," he laughed at the last part as if it were a funny joke. "But I suppose that all comes with Hollywood," he shrugged. "If all I did was complain about the bad, I would be wildly ungrateful. My life was- and is- a dream. We had a good run, the boys and I. I just wish..," he trailed off.  
"Wish that you could've enjoyed it all with the person you love?," I guessed the end of his sentence. A closed-mouth smile occupied his lips with a deep sadness at my understanding.  
"That would've been nice." We sat there without speaking for a few moments, a silent conversation going on beneath the surface. It was I who spoke next.  
"May I ask a rather personal question?," I asked and he chuckled at my inquiry.  
"Isn't that your job?," he fired back, but from the kind smile he sported on his dimpled face, I knew it was a dig in good humor. "Go right ahead," he granted me permission, nodding for me to continue. "I must say, you're quite well-mannered for a snake. You're the first reporter to ask for my consent before digging right in," he explained, and I'm not sure that it was supposed to sound as sad as it did to me.  
"Were your fans right about the "beards"?," I asked him, and he tipped his head to the side and furrowed his brow thoughtfully.  
"The..?," he inquired, clearly not familiar with my use of terminology.  
"Fake girlfriends," I clarified, and he sat back in the hard chair, a look of tight comprehension washing over his face, seeming still just a tad bitter, even now.  
"I see," he said, running the fingertips of his left hand along the edge of the wooden table. "I know what a beard is," he assured me, running a hand through his long chocolate locks of hair, "it's just been awhile."  
"Did you really have "beards"?," I asked again and he sighed, running the hand that gently traced the aged wood of the table over his face.  
"We did," he confirmed, then laughed breathily, "we had beards, yes."  
"Eleanor Calder?," I asked.  
"Beard. Full-time beard," he said quickly, looking down at the table as he traced the ridges in the wood with his index finger. His tea was likely getting cold. "A nice girl- some of them can be downright insufferable," he grumbled begrudgingly, obviously having a thing or two to say on the topic.  
"Did you have any "insufferable" beards?," I pressed and he looked up at me then, catching my eye with green ones filled with mischief.  
"I'd rather not say, if that's alright," he said, a hint of an amused smirk on his lips. "It would be incredibly unprofessional of me," he defended his silence. He always seemed to be coming up with explanations for even his most logical responses. I wondered at what point in his skyrocket to fame did he learn to keep a guard up at all times.  
"Of course," I agreed, glancing down at the notes printed neatly on my 3x8 in index cards then back up at him. "Did keeping these beards ever strain your relationship with Louis?," I asked.  
"Oh, but of course," Harry answered instantaneously, almost before I finished stating the question. "That kind of pressure to be someone you're not even when cameras aren't necessarily rolling or paps aren't tracking your car is Hell. It would be for any relationship," he told me and I nodded.  
"Louis had Eleanor Calder for a fairly long time," I stated and Harry nodded.  
"That he did," he concurred.  
"Next he had Briana Jungswirth for a bit," I said and he rolled his eyes but remained silent for the tapes that rolled from the table so I had no proof of such a reaction.  
"He certainly did," he replied flatly, taking a gulp of his surely cold tea. I almost wanted to offer him a spot of scotch to mix into his drink with the direction our conversation was taking. The only reason I decided against it was the fact that I knew that he was too polite to accept my invitation.  
"What did that feel like on your end?," I asked and he sighed, taking a moment to think. He furrowed his brow and his lower cherry-red lip jutted out in a thoughtful pout as he considered my question.  
"It felt like..," he began, taking a few moments to place his words, "Well, some days were easier than others. Some days we could either hide away or something really exciting would happen and take my mind off of it for awhile, like announcing a stadium tour or being informed that our record had gotten to number one in some ridiculous amount of countries," he explained carefully, taking a deep breath before continuing. "Other days, though, were exceedingly difficult. There were days when I wouldn't see him at all besides the photos surfacing in magazines and on Twitter of him with El or Briana. There were times that he was right within my reach but he walked ahead with his fingers laced through someone else's," he said, not meeting my eye. His gaze drifted past me and through the window, out at a world far behind the one we were living in currently. "Eventually I just started walking in front of them because I was so sick of watching him touch someone else like that." I felt my heart sinking for Harry as he further peeled back his layers for me to explore who he was instead of the character he had assumed for himself during his years in the spotlight. He sure knew how to turn it on but it was somehow comforting to know that he could still find a way to flip the switch once in awhile. It gave me hope for him.  
"That sounds really awful, Harry," I said quietly, and he snapped his head up to look at me with narrowed eyes, searching for a hint of insincerity. When he was left empty-handed, he relaxed again, looking back down at the table. He always had his guard up so high that he could rarely tell when to put it down, so he never did.  
"It was, I guess," he shrugged as if it were nothing to worry about, but I knew that it was. "It felt like drowning sometimes," he said wistfully, and his eyes would not meet mine, but I could still see them bleeding bright green. "You know that old question that's supposed to leave you mind-boggled?," he asked, thinking for a moment before snapping his fingers as he recalled. He looked back at me and said, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" I hesitated before responding.  
"Are you asking me or are you just stating the question?," I asked and he shrugged, sipping his tea.  
"You can answer if you like," he said easily, teacup clinking lightly as he set it down on the saucer. I wasn't entirely sure where this was going, but the urgency in his eyes made me feel obligated to play along with his game.  
"I suppose it does," I said and he nodded thoughtfully.  
"Now," he began, cracking his knuckles one by one as he spoke, "if a tree is falling in a forest full of people, screaming all the way down but nobody cares to listen, why does it only seem to make a sound when it hits the ground?" We sat in silence after that; I didn't know what to say and he didn't expect me to. I took a long sip of my coffee, suddenly wishing I had scotch for not my guest, but for myself. A glimpse into his life of fraud and sexual denial left me feeling sick to my stomach and my head spinning; I didn't want to imagine what it must have been like to live it.  
"I'm so sorry, Harry," I murmured finally, breaking the heavy silence. He smiled at me then, warmth radiating from his body, and in that moment, I was convinced that he was the Sun incarnate. He reached across the table to grasp my hand with a massive gentle one that swallowed mine whole.  
"Why are you sorry?," he asked me, the twinkle returning to his eye, "I lived- we lived. We made it out in one piece, if barely. There's nothing to be sorry about now- all that is behind us."  
"Is it completely behind you?," I pressed, and he pursed his lips as he pondered my question.  
"I don't suppose it ever completely leaves you," he admitted, pulling his hand away from mine and sitting back in his chair. "I still get nervous when we go out, Louis still sometimes pulls his hand from my grasp on instinct when we step outside. The aftermath is there, but we're working on it. Maybe one day everything will be like it was when we first met- easy breezy. It's likely that it won't, that we'll always be working to fix this broken down reality of our existence as an item, but isn't that what it's all about?"  
"What what's all about?," I asked him to explain.  
"Relationships," he said, using his hands all the time to illustrate what his low gravelly voice was saying to me. "If there is nothing to work on in your relationship then you are either in denial or in a wildly fruitless partnership. Either way, you should probably run," he told me. "However, when there are problems and issues to be resolved in a relationship and you acknowledge that, then you work on it, make it better, and then discover a new set of issues that accompany the next layer once this one's completely peeled back." His confidence in the love that he had found and thrown his whole heart into at just the age of 16 inspired me. If everyone could love like Harry Styles, the world would be a better place.  
"Ever thought of becoming the next Dr. Phil?," I teased lightly and he laughed at that, throwing his head back and all. I felt more accomplished by this feat that by any cover story or thesis I had ever written in all of my career.  
"Dr. Harry," he said through a wide grin and twinkling eyes, "not too bad."  
"I think you'd make a great Dr. Harry," I said and he grinned widely, "Primetime cable television is your calling."  
"Cheers," he chuckled, offering his cup to me which I clinked my own against. It felt like being accepted into an elitist club, the type that I was shunned from in high school.  
"Do you know how Louis felt through it all?," I led us back on track. His face twisted slightly, not in bitterness or in spite, but just a tug of thought and a twinge of sadness in the downward curve of his mouth.  
"I have to say I really don't know," he replied, shaking his head and putting his hands up as if to further prove that he had nothing to offer me. "He closed off that part of himself from me, especially back then," he said with an almost guilty expression, running an idle finger along the rim of his half-empty teacup. "He knew how much it hurt me to see him with the girls that I suppose he didn't feel like throwing his own anguish on top of that would cause much other than my own collapse," he expressed with sad eyes. It was I who reached out and clutched his hand comfortingly, but spoke no words. "He always put me before himself. It's a great quality, but just as much as it's a blessing, it proves to be a constant curse."  
"He must love you very much," I said and he nodded with a smile that softened his entire existence; I have never seen pure love in its physical form, but during my interview with Mr. Styles, I discovered that love could be measured in the green of his eyes- how brightly they glowed and how darkly they faded.  
"He loves me more than I've ever been able to understand," he confided in me, taking a tentative last sip of his tea before his cup was empty once again. "I love him even more."  
"How are things now?," I asked. "You said before that you're still working through the aftermath, but besides that, how's everything else? Is this how you expected it to feel like when you came out?" He thought hard about this for a good minute or two; I could almost see the gears churning inside of his head as he analyzed my inquiry and how exactly to respond.  
"No," he said after a long break in the conversation, "it's not quite how I had pictured it." He paused again for a few moments, gathering his thoughts before he continued. "There was much more negative feedback than I expected but much less than Louis did, so I guess that evened out, in a way," he informed me, and I nodded for him to keep going. "Things are alright," he said, nodding to support his claim, "I'm happy. I should say we're happy, really. Lou and I are shacked up in a lovely house just outside of London, though we still spend quite a bit of time in LA," he told me before breaking into a face-splitting grin. "We've actually got some news," he confessed and I felt my eyebrows inch up my forehead in surprise.  
"Spill it, Styles," I pushed him and I swear, the Sun shine from that smile.  
"Louis and I are planning to be married quite soon," he told me and my jaw almost hit the ground. He laughed at my reaction.  
"Harry, that's- Oh my God that's amazing!," I fumbled over my words, too shocked to form a proper sentence and too happy to mind much at all.  
"Thank you," he said, smile softening around the edges but only glowing more brightly.  
"Really, H. Congratulations," I said, touching his arm supportively, and if I was not mistaken, I could've sworn I saw a few tears gathering in the corners of vivid green.  
"Thank you," he said, softly now, thanking me for my sincerity with a silent bat of his endless eyelashes.  
"You're finally getting the happy ending you wanted from the start," I said, smiling widely at him, and he shrugged.  
"Every step and every obstacle along the way has led up to this outcome," he said, not a smidgen of regret in his eyes.  
"If you could go back and change one thing about your journey together as a couple in this unforgiving business, what would you alter?," I asked him and he answered without even thinking.  
"Not a thing," he replied immediately, shaking his head with eyes filled with stars and a smile that could warm the coldest heart, "I wouldn't change a thing."

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!!!! hope u loved it!!!!! :)


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